There was a pair of dirty black flip-flops on the floor by the stairs. Less-than-ideal weaponry.
There was a creaking noise, and Lance’s gaze turned back to Bobby, who’d just lowered the tailgate on the massive Tundra parked on the opposite side of the garage.
“Come over here,” Bobby said, always motioning with the pistol. “Stand right here.” He pointed to the ground directly behind the truck.
“Am I going to ride in the back like a dog? That’s not really the safest, you know. Would probably be better if—”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”
Lance shut up. Figured he’d probably pressed his luck enough for one potentially deadly encounter.
Lance walked, his eyes never leaving the direction Bobby had the gun trained, which was always Lance’s chest. Lance had a few inches on Bobby, so the man literally just had to hold his arm straight out to be aligned perfectly with Lance’s heart. Lance walked around to the back of the truck, Bobby turning in a small semicircle as he did so, and then stopped directly behind the truck’s opened tailgate.
“Good boy,” Bobby said.
I’m pretty sure I’m older than him. How disrespectful.
“Now, stay put for a second. You got it?”
Lance said nothing.
“I said, do you have it?” Bobby asked.
Lance raised his hand, as if to ask a question in class. Bobby’s eyes followed it, stepped back as if braced for an attack, the gun thrust out further than before. Lance didn’t move, just stood with his hand raised. Bobby stared for two seconds, then three, then he got it. “Yes?”
Lance cleared his throat. “You told me to shut up. If you want me to answer, well … just make up your mind, okay?”
Bobby Strang’s face turned a deep shade of red, and then he sighed and spoke in a voice that said he was clearly tired of playing the game. “Just don’t fucking move, okay? Don’t move and I won’t shoot you. Those are the rules. Got it?”
Lance said he got it.
Bobby nodded and stared at Lance for another five seconds before he reached forward with his free hand and slid a large duffle bag toward him, pulling it down the truck’s bed toward the tailgate. He raised his gun-wielding arm up, keeping the barrel of the pistol perfectly positioned. One-handed, he struggled to unzip the bag, cursing as it slid away from him on the first two tries. He finally got it open on the third, and his hand disappeared inside, fishing around for a moment before coming back into view holding a slightly used roll of good old-fashioned duct tape.
Lance knew where this was going, and in the same instant, he looked at his surroundings, tried to predict the next few moments’ worth of events, and thought he might have found a potential opportunity to turn the tables on his captor.
He took one small step forward. A shuffle, really, just a slight readjustment of his stance. But he figured it would be enough.
Bobby Strang forewent zipping the bag closed and slid it away, back toward the front of the truck. He put the roll of tape in front of his own face and used his teeth to pry loose the end and then unspool six inches of tape, just enough to get it started.
“Hold out your wrists,” he said. “Together, like this.” He held out his own wrists to demonstrate the position he wanted Lance to mimic, and Lance could hardly believe his luck. Bobby Strang couldn’t have made himself any more vulnerable to Lance’s plan if Lance had given him verbal instructions and a diagram to follow.
Lance was standing facing the bed of the truck, and Bobby Strang was beside him, standing just to the side of the tailgate. When he held out his arms, one hand holding the roll of duct tape, the other hand holding the gun, he held them out directly over the truck’s opened tailgate, his forearms right in line with the hinge.
Lance knew there was the possibility of the gun going off during his next move, but he also knew if he didn’t act now, he might not get another chance. He figured his odds were fifty-fifty. Not the greatest, but clear-cut all the same.
Lance had always been quick. It was one of the reasons he’d been such a great basketball player. Folks always assumed it was because he was tall. And, yeah, that certainly helped, but it was the quickness that sold it.
In the blink of an eye, Lance dipped down, reached his hands under the tailgate, and then flung it up with all the strength he could summon. There was a soft, dull resistance at impact, and a high-pitched yelp escaped Bobby Strang’s lips before being followed by a harsh and violent scream as his arms were completely smashed between the tailgate and the end of the truck. Despite the human noise, Lance heard the gun clatter out of Bobby’s hands, could make out the sound of the steel against the truck bed.
He didn’t waste any time looking for it. Instead he moved in to end it all.
Bobby Strang was dumbstruck, staring down at his bloody arms. Lance took one step forward and grabbed Bobby’s head in both his hands and
(Oh my God!)
smashed the man’s face into the side of the truck. Bobby Strang’s body went instantly limp and crumpled to the floor.
Lance stood, his heart racing and his mind reeling from what he’d just seen.
30
Lance didn’t look for the gun, but he did quickly stick his hand into Bobby Strang’s front pants pocket and pull out his iPhone and car keys. Then he bolted back up the two steps, into the kitchen, and out the front door. He ran as fast as he could back down the street, filling his lungs with the cool night air. It tasted sweet and intoxicating. It tasted like freedom. How close had he come to meeting his end? Too close.
He pushed the thought away and kept running, reaching Renee’s Honda and flinging Bobby Strang’s car keys overhand into the woods at the end of the cul de sac. Lance didn’t feel like being chased right now. He kept the cell phone, though, sliding it into the same pocket as his own flip phone and folding himself into the driver’s seat. He cranked the engine and, in a moment of clarity and caution, managed to calm himself enough to slowly pull the car off the grass and gently accelerate up the street, back past Bobby’s house, and then turn right. Only then did Lance risk stepping on the gas a little to put as much distance between himself and Bobby Strang as he could.
He replayed the original trip in his mind and managed to reverse the course and replicate the correct turns, and then he found himself back on the main road, heading back toward the direction of Westhaven High School, back toward the Route 19 intersection, which would lead left into town or right toward the motel.
His heart was still pounding in his chest, but he’d gotten his breathing under control. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, sitting up as straight as he could in the seat without his head hitting the ceiling, eyes straining to see out into the night with only the help of the weak headlight beams. He was on alert, terrified that whoever had been on the other end of the phone with Bobby Strang would somehow instantly know that things had not gone as planned, and that Lance was on the loose. Therefore, Lance had a very large target on his back, and from what he’d seen thus far in Westhaven, a new threat could take any shape, could be any person. Heck, at this point he wouldn’t be too surprised if the Honda he was driving suddenly did its best Christine impression and drove off the road, slamming headfirst into a tree.
As the car ate up a few miles of road without incident, Lance slouched a little and took a deep breath. He was approaching the high school, the bright lights no longer burning and the gates to the parking lot closed. The fun was over. Lance took stock of how much new information he now possessed since the last time he’d been in this very same spot. What had initially been a gaping-hole mystery now had quite a bit filled in.
Lance now knew for certain that there was a woman involved who seemed to be giving the orders and was probably directly responsible for the boys’ disappearances. Lance wasn’t sure how the power to control the weather and possess police officers played into things, but he was certain that if he found this woman, he’d figure out the rest whether he wanted to or not.
<
br /> Bobby and Glenn Strang were also key players somehow. Okay, maybe not key players, but they had a hand in the mess, and both seemed to be held in some sort of grip by the woman in charge.
Which, without the last bit of information Lance had accidentally gained, would have been enough to suspect Allison Strang. But … with what Lance had just seen, he was positive Allison Strang was the woman running the show. She was the danger. She was the reason Westhaven had suffered so much loss. She was the reason families had been devastated and torn apart and uprooted.
Lance had never planned on getting the visions, and he could never figure out why some people’s lives flooded into him like a rushing river and others didn’t show him a single thing; not their favorite color or middle name or even their current thought. But when Lance had grabbed Bobby Strang’s head to slam it into the side of the truck, he’d seen something so shocking and disgusting it made his stomach turn.
It had happened in an instant, as if, at the single second Lance and Bobby Strang’s bodies had connected, Lance had received a file upload of Bobby’s memory at the fastest bandwidth known to man. Faster, even. A single touch, instant knowledge.
Lance shuddered as he remembered the scene. The bedroom, the ruffled sheets, the backside of her naked torso, the long blond hair sticking to her shoulders that were slick with sweat, the gentle moan as she rocked back and forth atop Bobby Strang’s—
There was a vibration in Lance’s pocket, and he jerked back to reality. He’d not passed a single car on the road and was about to approach the stop sign at the Route 19 intersection. He slowed the car and flipped on his right turn signal. With the car stopped, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his flip phone, for one fearful moment thinking that it might be Bobby’s phone ringing instead, with her on the other end, wondering what was taking so long, or worse, calling specifically to speak to Lance because she knew what he had done. Lance knew he’d have to confront her eventually, but he wanted it to be on his own terms.
But then Lance realized he didn’t hear “Eye of the Tiger” playing, and he knew it was his own phone ringing. He saw Leah’s name and quickly answered, hoping he hadn’t taken too long.
“Leah?”
“Hey, I’m back at the motel. Susan dropped me off after I finally convinced Daddy I was fine to be on my own. Where are you? How’d it go with Bobby?”
Lance thought about how to answer this. He made the right turn and drove the Honda toward the motel, toward Leah.
“It didn’t go so great for me for a while. But it ended up worse for Bobby.”
She paused for a second, then said, “Okay. What does that mean?”
“It means Bobby’s probably going to need a good dentist, and I got us a lot of information without trying too hard.”
Apprehensively, Leah said, “Why does Bobby need a dentist?”
“Because I slammed his face into the side of that expensive truck he drives.”
“Lance! Why?”
“Well, for starters, he pulled a gun on me.”
Silence.
Lance could see the lights from the motel up the road. Thirty seconds away now.
“But, Bobby’s got bigger problems than some busted teeth,” Lance said. “Like the fact he’s sleeping with his mother.”
31
Lance pulled the battered Honda into the motel’s parking lot and parked it in front of the office door. He killed the headlights and the engine and sat in the darkened car’s interior, resting his head against the headrest.
He was tired. His body ached—his head, his wrist, every muscle—and he felt like he could fall asleep right there in the driver’s seat and sleep through the night and most of the next day.
You can have playtime when your chores are done, mister.
His mother’s voice, dug up from another memory he’d stored away. He’d heard her say this a thousand times during his youth, and while it didn’t exactly apply to his current situation, he caught the drift. He pushed himself away from the seat, grabbed his backpack from the back and got out of the car. The air was still cool, but there was no breeze. Lance stood next to the Civic and scanned the parking lot. There was one pickup truck parked at the far end of the lot, right in front of the last room on the row. A guest, Lance figured. Not a threat.
He walked up to the sidewalk and pulled on the office door. It moved maybe an eighth of an inch before coming to a sudden, violent stop, shaking and rattling in the frame and causing more noise than even seemed possible in the still night. Lance jumped, shocked at the sound and the vibration up his arm, and then took a step back. The door was locked.
A small tendril of panic swirled up his spine.
She knows what happened, Lance thought. The woman—Allison Strang—knows what I did to her son, and she came straight for Leah. Or, at least, she sent someone straight for Leah.
Lance had just started to dart his eyes around the lot again, looking for something he could use to smash the glass pane out of the office door and make his way in, when Renee’s face peeked from between the blinds, and then the noise of a deadbolt clicking out of place found Lance’s ears.
Renee pushed the door open and stepped outside. She was wearing a dirty zip-up parka, as if it were winter and not a crisp fall night, and her hair hung down around her face in untidy strands. She looked tired. But Lance thought that Renee might be a woman who always looked tired, no matter what hour of the day. Probably rolled-out-of-bed tired.
“She’s inside,” Renee said, her voice soft. “She’s resting in bed. She wants you to come back and lock the door behind you.”
Lance nodded. “Thank you for the car. It … well, it probably saved my life.”
If Renee heard him, she didn’t seem to care. She asked, “Can you help me carry the boys to the car? They’re sleeping, and they’ve gotten so heavy.”
Lance stood on the sidewalk, his body pleading for rest. But he knew his mother would have slapped him to next Wednesday if she ever found out he’d refused to help a kind, tired single mother of two. “Of course,” Lance said. “Where are they?”
The boys had been sleeping in the room next to Lance’s. The room was identical to Lance’s except for the Star Wars nightlight that had been plugged into the outlet along the outer wall. Renee unplugged it and stuck it into the pocket of her parka. “I’m glad I remembered this. I’d have never gotten them down otherwise.”
The boys looked so small in the bed, but they’d managed to splay their limbs over and across each other in a way that made it appear that they’d had an impromptu game of Twister before falling off to sleep. Lance approached the bed and gently untangled the first boy’s legs from the other’s and lifted him gently up. The boy’s head fell to Lance’s shoulder, and his arms instinctively wrapped around his neck. Lance smelled the scent of a no-tears baby shampoo and flashed back to his youth. His mother had used the same brand on him. He’d never forget the smell.
He walked carefully back to the car and deposited the first boy into the backseat, buckling him in before heading back for boy number two. With the same routine repeated, Renee closed the room’s door and stood by the car next to Lance, who was more winded than he should have been after carrying two small boys a total of maybe twenty-five yards. Lance and Renee looked at each other for a moment, an odd calmness and comfort somehow hovering over them, as if the endeavor of getting the boys into the car had sealed some sort of bond between them.
Lance was about to thank Renee again for the car and head inside, but she asked, “Why are you here?”
Lance stared at her, saw the inquisition in her eyes. It was as if she knew he was something more than what he appeared to be, as if she recognized something brighter burning inside him.
Lance wasn’t sure what to say.
(Do you, a person with your gifts, honestly believe things could be so random?)
“Honestly,” he said, “I’m here because right now I think this is just where I’m supposed to be.”
Renee nodded, as if this made all the sense in the world. Then she took a step forward and kissed Lance on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. She got in the car, started the engine with a sputter, and drove away.
Lance watched her drive out of sight, then turned and went into the office.
The motel’s office was brightly lit, as usual, but empty. The television was off. Whatever traces of Renee’s two young children there’d been earlier were now cleaned up and tucked away, and things were as they should be. Lance thumbed the deadbolt behind him, then switched on the NO VACANCY sign for good measure. He didn’t think Leah would mind.
He adjusted his backpack over one shoulder and crossed the room, the floorboards creaking under his weight.
“Lance, is that you?” Leah’s voice called out from behind her closed bedroom door at the far end of the office.
“It is I, young maiden! Your valiant knight, back from an adventure in the deepest, darkest corner of the kingdom.”
He reached the door and turned the handle and cracked the door a bit, peered in. Leah was sitting up in bed, her ankle propped up on a pillow. The television was on, muted, a late-night talk show host sitting behind a desk with a celebrity Lance recognized but could not name talking animatedly from the guest’s chair.
Lance Brody Omnibus Page 26
